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The Batman Review

“It’s certainly a Batman but is it *the* Batman?”

Hey, Everybody! Welcome to another review from Flickmuncher.com where we entertain food for thought. My name is Ben and I’m the Flickmuncher. It’s been a couple of years since my last review and in that time a lot has happened the world over. For my part I’ve switched jobs, gained 20 pounds, and finished writing a full draft of a four hundred and fifty page book. But as one who is sentimental about old things I thought it was time I returned to my roots and started putting together some new reviews for you guys. So lets get into it!

Not having gone to the movie theaters much in the last two years, either due to the cumbersome restrictions or just sheer disinterest in what was being shown I’ve finally started to visit some of the newer material being produced by Hollywood lately. The most recent example of this is Matt Reeves’ The Batman. The Caped Crusader is a well known—if not the most well known—crime fighter in popular culture and has had many different iterations throughout the years. Some were phenomenal, such as Batman ’89 and The Dark Knight. Others like Batman vs. Superman and Batman and Robin, well…the less said about those the better.

Recently though a new contender has stepped into the ring in the form of The Batman, because for some reason Warner Bros. has gotten into their heads that putting “The” in front of a title automatically makes it new and ‘hip’ again (e.g. Suicide Squad vs ‘THE’ Suicide Squad). Directed by Matt Reeves, creator of titles such as Cloverfield (2008) and the recent Planet of the Apes movies, this film was intended as a reset of the Dark Knight after his previous incarnation as Ben Affleck supposedly flopped with audiences in the horribly botched Snyderverse Justice League films. So Warner Execs, with absolutely no spine among them, immediately hit the panic button and ordered an entirely new version of the character that would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Justice League—until of course, they change their minds again and put him in with a black Superman and the Rock as Black Adam, but I digress.

So how does this new film measure up? Robert Pattinson plays a young, decidedly not-sparkling Batman that has been working his new career as a vigilante crime fighter for two years now. Using his virtually infinite resources as Bruce Wayne and the help of his loyal butler Alfred (played by Andy Serkis) he has set fear into the hearts of criminals all across Gotham when they see the symbol of the bat shined into the sky at night. He’s even earned the trust of some of the police force including up and coming Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). Yet on the eve of a major election, the incumbent mayor is found murdered due to the actions of a mysterious maniac that the police refer to as ‘The Riddler’. Enlisting the help of Gordon and amateur thief Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), Batman’s investigation soon finds him caught up in a conspiracy that reaches into Gotham’s very roots, and possibly Batman’s as well.

Before that though I’d like to do my best Captain Kidd impression when I say: ARRGHH, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS – GREENHORNS, YE BE WARNED.

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. On to the review.

Let’s talk about the good stuff first. In my opinion this is the best looking Batman films since Batman (1989). While Nolan’s Dark Knight movies tried to bring Batman into the real world, this movie builds a real world around him, which I think it does brilliantly. My personal image of Gotham is a mixture of today’s minimalist designs built atop layers of more intricate gothic spires, and this is what I imagined. Every frame of the film within Gotham evokes a city that tries to maintain a clean and civilized façade while its jagged, corrupt, and sinister core is poking out through every seam it can find. The place is literally dripping with atmosphere—seriously, it rains so much you’d think Gotham was built right next to Seattle—and is exactly the kind of place I would imagine finding a character like Batman silently patrolling the streets. The only place in the film that didn’t do that was ironically Wayne Manor which didn’t seem nearly grand or stately enough. Rather it seemed like a set from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios. It wasn’t a huge thing as very little of film takes place there but it was still a rather disappointing display for the home of The Batman.

“Who put the big pole up in front of the Kool-Aid Man sign?”

In addition, this movie plays with a part of Batman’s character we don’t see very often in the movies: the World’s Greatest Detective. Sure we’ve seen a couple occasions when he would use his knowledge to help locate a criminal or solve their dastardly scheme but with the exception of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (a movie I highly recommend by the way) I don’t know we’ve had a Batman movie dedicate a solid half of the movie to him solving a crime using classic techniques such as using informants, conducting surveillance, and noting down relevant information to help in solving the crime and finding the perpetrator. It’s just a shame that the movie seems to abandon this approach after the first third, but I’ll get to that. It’s really refreshing to see Batman treated as the World’s Greatest Detective instead of a simple brawler/super ninja with a bat-themed costume.

The other big thing I appreciated was the strength of the supporting cast. If there’s one thing I learned from watching the Harry Potter films it’s that a strong supporting cast can do a lot to uplift an otherwise mediocre film, and this film is no exception to that rule. Headlined by Andy Serkis as Alfred, John Turturro as Crime Boss Falcone, Jeffrey Wright as Lieutenant Gordon, and Colin Farrell as the Penguin, this is a top tier supporting cast that does a lot through their performances to lend gravity and authenticity to the story in a way that helps pull you as an audience member into the story on the screen. Such an effect cannot be understated when you consider what the film would be like without it. Also, I have to give props to the team that did the makeup for Colin Farrell as the Penguin. I genuinely didn’t know it was him until the end credits.

Unfortunately this brings me to the main cast and the less positive part of this review. So if you like this movie and just wanted to hear me speak in glowing terms about how amazing this movie is then I’m glad you’ve enjoyed yourself and suggest you exit now and have a wonderful day, because this is where things get dark.

The main cast of The Batman is sadly rather lackluster. It’d be unfair to say that Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz as Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle respectively are out-and-out bad in this movie but their performances are one of the weakest elements. I can remember a number of moments from the supporting cast I mentioned earlier, throughout this film. I can remember John Turturro as Falcone, exuding warm charisma while still being menacing every time he was on screen. I remember Colin Farrell’s Penguin, barely hiding his resentment at being a stooge to Falcone, a man he has no respect for. I remember Andy Serkis as Alfred almost breaking down in tears while confessing to Bruce that the Waynes might not always have been as noble as they wanted people to believe. I can’t remember a single scene with Pattinson or Kravitz that stuck with me that way.

The lackluster main cast is only weighed down further by what is in my opinion a very weak villain in the form of the Riddler. Besides never actually calling himself that (the police are the ones who give him the name), Riddler struggles to find a true identity in this film. Part of this is because he is hidden for the first half of the movie as the subject of the detective story so we don’t get to know him that well. Putting aside the insultingly trite approach of making him a wannabe youtuber, his crimes are given a rather milquetoast motivation to support them. He wants to expose the corruption of Gotham for everyone to see. Okay, that would be fine but we never see how that corruption affected him personally. Why does he care so much about exposing Gotham’s corruption? Yeah, he’s a forensic accountant but that’s an occupation, not a motive. On top of that his means of getting his message out kind of convoluted and cryptic; What radical revolutionary promotes their cause by committing crimes and then giving their reason in riddles that only one person in the city can solve? If A Tale of Two Cities had worked that way it would have been Charles Dickens’ shortest novel. In previous versions of the Batman mythos, the Riddler worked as a character because he was so egotistical and narcissistic that he would commit crimes just to prove how smart he was. Then when Batman outsmarted him he would commit another crime with a different riddle to do the same thing. That is a textbook definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That’s what makes him crazy. This Riddler can’t decide what he is. Is he a murderer with a perverted sense of justice? Is he a genius criminal who gets kicks out of leaving clues behind just to prove nobody can stop him? Is he an anarchist? I don’t know because the film never lets him be one thing long enough for us to understand him.

Because nothing says Riddler like a nerdy green ripoff of Pulp Fiction?

This brings us to my personal two biggest issues with the film: the length and the structure. This film is just shy of three hours long, and boy did it feel like it was three hours long. Now, I’m not against films with long running times. I’ve seen plenty of films that I actually think would have benefitted from a longer runtime than they were given. The Lord of the Rings is one of my all-time favorite film series to watch and each of those is over three hours—four if you watch the extended versions. Yet throughout those movies I never once recall checking my phone for the time. With The Batman, I recall doing so at least three times. In school, when kids start looking at the clock during class, it usually means either they have some place to be, or they are bored out of their minds and just want to be out of the room as soon as physically possible.
In either case they have disengaged mentally.

Now—you might ask—how could a movie starring Batman that allows you to see him in all his glory for three full hours, possibly be boring? The answer is actually pretty simple. Batman in his full glory is not interesting enough on its own to keep someone engaged. A simple screensaver with a picture of the Dark Knight will do the same thing and for far longer. Batman has to have something interesting to do in those three hours and unfortunately, after the first hour, he really doesn’t. This wouldn’t be so bad if there was fun stuff happening elsewhere in the movie but the rest of the film is so unfocused that it never got me back after that first hour ended.

Which is where the structure comes into play. Most films have a basic structure wherein an event sets the story in motion (Joker commits a crime), there’s a build-up (Batman searches for the Joker), a climax (Batman finds the Joker), and finally the story is resolved (Batman takes Joker to Arkham—again). The Batman starts out this way with Riddler murdering someone, leading Batman to try and catch him, but after the first hour it detours into a conspiracy story involving every major figure in Gotham (except the young black woman running for mayor. ‘Kay). Yhen when both the murder mystery and the conspiracy story have been wrapped up and you think it’s time to say goodbye, there’s still almost an hour left where Batman has to stop a terrorist attack that the Riddler happened to orchestrate. The movie feels like three movies in one with none of them being allowed to breath, ironically talking more and saying less.

CONCLUSION: Leaving the theatre with my brother after watching this movie I wasn’t sure what to think of this movie. It is a Batman movie so there’s always something to enjoy. Yet for all that there was I just felt…tired. Not in the way that you feel out of breath after a rollercoaster at the amusement park or exhausted after running a marathon. More tired the way you feel when you come home from work; where you did what you had to do and now you’re done.

I’m sure there are plenty of folks who will like or even love this movie and its dark and gritty realization of the caped crusader and as I’ve noted above there are a lot of things to like about this movie. It’s certainly not the worst batman movie we’ve ever seen, or even the worst movie with batman in it. But while that might not be a high bar to reach—thank you Batman and Robin—it does make me wonder what this movie could have been. Wasted potential is a difficult thing to measure but it’s easy to see when there’s as much richness of atmosphere, world, and characters as this movie has to offer.

As it is though, I cannot truly recommend it except to the most die-hard of batfans. For the time invested this movie, like the Batman’s entrance, is a long slow plod toward an unclear destination.

What did you guys think? Did you like this movie? What stood out? Reach out to me in the comments section or comment on Facebook. Thanks and have a wonderful weekend!

Aquaman Review: King of the Seven Seas

Hey Everybody! Welcome to another review from Flickmuncher.com where we entertain food for thought. My name is Ben and I’m the Flickmuncher. We’ve got quite the line up these next few weeks and I’m excited to share the next several reviews with you as well as show off the new collaborative reviews that I’ll be doing for episodes of the 2017 Ducktales TV series with our new contributor Mimi the Flickmunchkin, which should be starting in March. However, until then, let’s take a look at the recent DC movie release, Aquaman.

So let’s get right into it. What’s the story? Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) was a boy born cursed. The son of a Lighthouse Keeper (Temuera Morrison) and the runaway Queen of the underwater Kingdom of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman), he was blessed with amazing abilities beyond that of normal people. Yet he is constantly split between the surface world that he calls home, and the realm of the sea that calls him to lead it. Uninterested in becoming Atlantis’ king since the death of his mother, Arthur spends his time using his abilities to do good deeds where he can. All this changes however, when his younger half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) starts to gather the kingdoms of the seven seas to attack the surface world. With the help of his mother’s old friend Volka (Willem Defoe) and the sea witch, Mera (Amber Heard), Arthur must become the Aquaman to defeat Orm and bring peace to Atlantis and the Surface.

In a switch on how I usually present my reviews, I’m going to cover the negatives first and get to the positives later.
To start things off, let’s look at the villains. First, our main villain, Prince Orm. As superhero villains go, Orm is actually not that bad. He has a connection to the hero, and a personal reason to hate him thanks to their mother’s death—she was executed for her relationship with Arthur’s father and having Arthur. Such brotherly conflict is often rich with drama and works well enough between these two characters. You might be thinking: well that doesn’t sound like a negative to me. And you’d be right. The negative with Orm is that he tends to fall back on the whole “rule the world” cliché and the brotherly conflict isn’t used as fully is it is like with Thor and Loki. This weakness is made more acute by the fact that Orm’s reasons for wanting to attack the surface are rather general and vague, owing to a generic “polluting the oceans” message. Alternatively, he could have blamed the death of his mother on the Surface and used that as his motivation, which would have served his character far better given his attitude toward Arthur and his mother, Queen Atlanna.

Then we have Black Manta, widely regarded by fans as Aquaman’s greatest enemy, who is given a terrific motivation when Arthur chooses not to save his father (a pirate but still a human being) from drowning. But then he basically gets relegated to the position of “hired thug” and gets one quick action scene before getting taken out and promised a sequel by the producers (depending on the box office, of course). If you’re wondering again why this is a bad thing, there’s a reason you don’t have a main bad guy get beaten in his first confrontation with the hero, let alone the second time. It makes that bad guy seem less of a threat to the hero. If he’s already gotten his head handed to him before, why should we as the audience believe that the next time will turn out any differently? We know he won’t have any lasting victory anyway so there’s less of a doubt in our minds about the hero’s chances.

Besides this are a number of smaller things that bugged me. First, the musical score in the film is appropriately epic and sweeping for the majority of the runtime. Which is why it feels so jarring when they play a piece of pop music or rap like “Ocean to Ocean” by Pitbull. It just sounds out of place.
Second, while the drama is good for the most part, there are several moments that felt rushed in order to move the plot forward to fit the runtime (which is already a colossal two hours and twenty-three minutes). For instance, a moment between Arthur and his Mom gets cut extremely short to make way for exposition that leads to the next major plot point. I feel like other scenes that dragged on a little too long, like Manta tinkering with Atlantean tech, could have been trimmed to make more time for scenes like this. It’s not a huge thing, but emotional scenes should always be given time to breathe against scenes that are window dressing, or just there for the sake of being cool.
Lastly, a lot of the jokes that I think were intended to make the movie feel more “marvel-esque” were either mistimed or just fell flat to me, and there were several points in the movie where the CGI—however stylish it was intended to be—just looks a little too plastic and fake, particularly during some of the action sequences.

However, with all of that said, there are a lot of positives about this movie that I did like, starting with the visuals. I’ve made no secret in the past of my dislike for films that needlessly desaturate the color from the picture to make things feel more “dark and edgy”. Color is a wonderful thing when you consider how much richer and more interesting it can make an image that would otherwise seem rather mundane. Other movies from the DC franchise have had an issue with colors in the past to an almost absurd degree. Happily though, Aquaman does not have a problem with color. In fact, it’s one of the most colorful films I’ve seen in awhile particularly during the underwater scenes which take up a lot of the movie. The glowing phosphorescence and wide variety of shades involved helps to make for some truly beautiful images. It also helps the various undersea environments feel like a truly alien environment, which is another strength of this film. It takes advantage of the natural strangeness and mystery of the oceans to make Atlantis feel like an actual underwater city with history. It has different levels with shell based high-rises, a customs and import system, catacombs and ruins beneath it that all combine to feel like an actual underwater city.

This would probably be enough if Atlantis was all we got to see. The filmmakers however, went one step beyond and made several different undersea kingdoms with their own inhabitants and cultures. None of them are as multi-layered or detailed as Atlantis itself, but it shows how much thought the creators put into making this world and that’s something I can appreciate.

Besides this the story is delightfully simple and easy to follow, yet it also has a good familial conflict that makes it a bit more personal. I know this might seem boring and unoriginal to some but there’s a reason that siblings fighting over power, one to preserve, the other to destroy, is such a regularly used trope dating back to ancient times. Because it works and works well. We’ve all had fights with our family. Those fights are often very emotional and very personal and in spite of what Hollywood would like us to believe, our families are not something we can simply choose to ignore. They are a very personal thing for each of us no matter how we feel about them. That’s why stories about them are so powerful for us. Aquaman may not use it as well as some other movies I’ve seen but it’s still done well so I have to applaud the effort if not the result.

Lastly, we have the action which takes advantage of the underwater environment to create some of the more unique looking set pieces that I’ve seen in a movie in quite awhile. Since the characters are buoyant and don’t often walk on the sea floor the battles are very—for lack of a better word—fluid; constantly in motion. Now, if this was lazy motion where the speed was always the same, it would probably get boring. But the movie varies the speed of combat enough to not get stagnant and in the one on one fights Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson are physical enough actors to be convincing. Overall, the battle sequences are a lot of fun to watch.

CONCLUSION: By this point most people know that the DC movies (or the DCEU as they’re known by fans have not had the best track record for making quality films. In fact, one of my personal least favorite films of all time was 2016’s Batman v Superman, which was a commercial success but a critical flop. I’ve always supported the idea that blockbusters shouldn’t be critically condemned for being blockbusters but that they should also try to be more than just cash grabs for the studios. Whether that’s being a deeper more critically acceptable film, or one that is just plain fun to watch, it should at least try. Aquaman is a film that tries. It may not always succeed when it tries but at least it tries and tries hard. That is one of the best compliments I can give to a film like this, especially given my history with DC movies of the past. I can’t say whether this is the beginning of a new era of DC films with higher quality. But I know that this was a film I was prepared not to like, yet I enjoyed it anyway and look forward to seeing it again sometime.

What did you think of the review? Did you like this film? What parts of it stuck out to you? Let me know all about it on the Flickmuncher Facebook page or in the comments below. Thanks and as always, May the Flick be with You!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl: “Yo-ho, Yo-ho. A pirates life for me!”

Hey Everybody! Welcome to another review from Flickmuncher.com. Sorry it’s been so long since my last review. Between work and the madness of the holidays there hasn’t been a whole lot of time for me to get these reviews out. However, I am excited for the next few upcoming months as I will be doing a series of retrospectives on some of my favorite movies and episodes of anime and TV shows so I hope you’ll tune in for those when they come out.

Today we’ll be taking a look back at a movie from the early 2000s in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It’s rather strange for me to review a movie that I saw as a kid as a “Golden Oldy”. Kind of reminds me how old I am now I guess. But here’s a bit of backstory on this movie: The year is 2003. Hollywood has just started to recover from the dark reign of disaster epics like Independence Day, Deep Impact, and Twister. Movies are starting to feel fun again with the appearance of fantasy epics like the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises, and are starting to see hopeful characters in the form of Spiderman and the X-Men movies.
It is a time when ideas that Hollywood execs would have laughed out of the building on principle five years before are becoming the golden children of the cinema. Yet despite that, the idea that inspired this movie was so corny that even I would have had doubts about allowing it to be made. I mean really, a movie about pirates based off of an amusement park ride? Are you serious? To make matters worse, the pirate genre as a whole had not performed well up to that point. The most recent wide releases of the genre—1999s Treasure Island by Peter Rowe and Disney’s Treasure Planet, also 1999—did not perform well at the box office and the last one that did decently was 1996s Muppet Treasure Island (hardly a serious pirate movie). So it was generally assumed that this Disney movie based on a (rather boring if we’re being honest) amusement park ride, would be a flop just like all the others.

Yet somehow, amid all the naysaying, it managed to become the fourth highest grossing movie of the year in a year that included blockbusters like Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Finding Nemo. And its success wasn’t just commercial but critical as well. Johnny Depp even received an Oscar nomination for his iconic performance as Captain Jack Sparrow. How was this possible? Had popular culture just lost their collective minds to temporary insanity or was this film truly that good? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.

So what’s the plot? Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is a drunken wandering buccaneer who winds up in the coastal settlement of Port Royal while looking for his ship. In the process of searching for a vessel to stea- er…commandeer, he ends up saving the lovely daughter of Port Royal’s governor, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly), from drowning. Unfortunately, the locals don’t take kindly to pirates wandering around their town and in spite of his good deed Jack is arrested and sentenced to hang. Fortunately for him, the town is attacked shortly thereafter by a group of much less friendly marauders from the mythical and eponymous Black Pearl. The pirates, led by the savvy Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), kidnap Elizabeth who is in possession of a gold piece that seems to be particularly valuable to them. Jack pursues the seafaring raiders with the aid of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), a childhood friend of Elizabeth’s, leading them across the sea in an adventure with swords, guns, and an undead curse for good measure.

There’s a common misconception in Hollywood and among storytellers in general, that if you make a story more complicated then it magically becomes a better story because they think they’re adding complexity. But the reality is that complicated and complex stories are two different things. Imagine if you were packing up a box with ping pong balls until you completely covered the bottom of the box. But rather than fill up the entire box, you went to get another box and only filled the bottom of that box as well. That’s making things more complicated.

Curse of the Black Pearl is an example of the opposite case. It takes a relatively simple premise—cursed pirates wish to lift said curse—and takes full advantage of it by giving the different characters personality and conflicting motives. Jack’s desire to reclaim the Black Pearl at any costs butts up against Will’s simple desire to rescue Elizabeth and return home and Barbossa’s desire to be rid of the curse that has plagued him for ten years. Any competent storyteller will tell you that the core of drama is conflict. The more conflict there is between the characters, the more drama is derived. Of course, as is the case with later entries in the Pirates franchise, this principle can be used too much or used poorly. However, Black Pearl succeeds at hitting the right balance of drama between the characters and their personalities that made us all fall in love with the franchise when it first appeared.

And speaking of characters, this movie revels in creating fun characters with great personality. Some of them can be pretty rote—such as Will and an annoyingly stern Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport)—but their dryness is more than made up for by the other pirates. Standouts include Mr. Gibbs (Kevin McNally) the classic yarn-spinning seafarer, and Pintel and Ragetti (Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook respectively) a sort of pirate version of Laurel and Hardy. The other pirates don’t get as much screen-time but are equally memorable if only by virtue of their designs.

The real jewels of this cast though are obviously Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush’s turn as Barbossa. Seriously, these characters are so well written and acted that they own every scene they’re in. Much has been written and said about Jack Sparrow and Johnny Depp’s rather unique take on the typical pirate Captain, and there’s little I think I can add to that conversation so I won’t belabor the point. However, if a hero is only as good as his villain then Jack Sparrow was well served to have Barbossa as his antagonist. I’m personally of the opinion that Geoffrey Rush is one of the most underrated actors of his generation and Barbossa is a major reason why. He helps turn what could have been a rather cartoonish bad-guy (cough Lone Ranger cough) into a menacing, unyielding, yet strangely sympathetic villain who wants to feel the joys of life again. Also, he manages to say the classic pirate “Aaaarrrgghh” line and have neither himself nor the audience crack up at it. That takes some good acting to pull off.

Beyond this though, the movie is possessing of some really fun action, with swashbuckling sword fights that are very well choreographed and a ship to ship battle the scale of which is reminiscent of pirate films of yesteryear like Seahawk and Captain Blood. I especially love the attention to detail during these scenes. For instance, if you’re paying attention, you can see the trails of musket shot and cannon balls rocketing over the characters heads. Details like this help lend the entire film an atmosphere of excitement and thrills that is hard to find in movies today.

That said it’s not a perfect movie. For one thing, the character of Commodore Norrington isn’t interesting in the slightest. Granted it’d be tough for him to measure up against the likes of Jack and Barbossa but as a secondary antagonist he falls prey to severe blandness until the last five minutes and is a pretty stereotypical British (rolling the “r” there) Colonial type that Hollywood loves to portray as having zero emotions because he’s so “civil”. That kind of portrayal being a personal pet peeve of mine I didn’t care for him at all despite the potential he had to be an interesting character in his own right. He would get more interesting as a character in later movies but as far as this one is concerned he just fell flat.

A similar situation could be said for Will Turner, who definitely has a more interesting character arc through the movie but also starts out rather boring, and ultimately makes some really stupid decisions for the sake of advancing the plot, which Jack even points out as being stupid decisions at various points in the film. And just to be clear, when a film admits that something about itself is stupid or incompetent does not make it any less stupid or incompetent. Admitting it means the filmmakers knew it was stupid or incompetent and did it anyway! I don’t hold that against this film but it is an observation of films in general these days that I have no doubt I’ll be discussing again at some point.

Besides that I will admit that while the action sequences are still a ton of fun to watch, the CGI for Black Pearl has not aged well. With the technology we see in movies today, it’s hard not to look at this and see the proverbial strings. Still it was made at a time when the technology we see today was still evolving and to its credit the skeleton pirates in Black Pearl were probably instrumental as a stepping stone to such spectacles as Avatar and the Transformers movies. But it still looks like something you’d see in a PS2 video game cutscene at certain points.

Conclusion: I first watched this movie when I was about twelve years old and at the time my two favorite movies were Hook and The Lord of the Rings so I was the perfect audience for this film. When the end credits came on and the amazing theme song (an impossibly underrated score in my opinion) started playing, the first thing I wanted to do was run outside to the playset in the backyard and duel with my brother on the imaginary spars of a Spanish Galleon, I was so excited.

Fast forward fifteen years and watching it again with the cynicism of adulthood, I definitely see more flaws but the movie that gave me that sense of adventure and excitement is still there and in some ways I enjoy it more now that I am older. And that’s what great adventure movies are supposed to do. They carry you away on that adventure to a place and time where, for a little while at least, your own day-to-day problems don’t matter so much. At one point Jack says that what the Black Pearl means to him is freedom. Freedom to see what lies beyond the horizon that always seems to taunt us with our own curiosity.

For that, I’ll happily board the Black Pearl any day.

So, what did you think of the review? Did you agree or disagree with my analysis? What parts stuck out to you? Let me know all about it on Facebook or in the comments below. Thanks and as always, May the Flick be with You!

Star Trek Beyond: “Is that classical music?”

Rating: “Go see it. Now!”

Hey, Everybody! Welcome to another review from Flickmuncher. Today we’re going to be reviewing the newest entry to a franchise that has shaped American culture in a myriad of ways since it was first aired on television 50 long years ago. This is going to be so much fun! So without further ado, let’s dig into Star Trek Beyond.

So to start off, let me give some context to this film for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Star Trek franchise, and to all you Trekkies out there, yes, they do exist. Starting off in 1966 as a tv series about a crew of space explorers and their trusty ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, the series was a decent hit but not enough to earn it more than three seasons. However, though the series was cancelled in 1969 it soon found cult status due to regular reruns in the 70s and sci-fi conferences across the country saw its uniforms and characters as mainstays soon after. The series popularity eventually saw the spawning of five new series (including the underrated animated series) and twelve feature-films that have brought joy to thousands of fans. Needless to say, that’s a pretty successful run.

However, with the franchise approaching its 50^th anniversary a lot of people were wondering what the folks at Paramount were going to do to celebrate this occasion which brings us to the movie we are here to talk about, Star Trek Beyond.

There were a lot of questions hanging over this production as it began. Not only was the 50^th anniversary coming up but the franchise was also coming off a bit of a sour note with the fans in 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness. Matters weren’t helped when J.J. Abrams, the director who reinvigorated the franchise by rebooting it in 2009, decided not to return, instead opting to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fans instantly started wondering who was going to take over the director’s chair. The anxiety only increased when it was announced that Justin Lin, director of several Fast and the Furious movies. People wondered whether a director who had done so much in action movies could do justice to a Star Trek movie.

The story is as follows: two and half years into their five year mission into deep space, the U.S.S. Enterprise and its’ crew put in at the new Yorktown Starbase for some badly needed shore leave when they recover a crewmember of a lost ship asking for help after they were attacked in a previously unexplored nebula. The Enterprise and its’ crew set out to find the crow of the lost ship but in the process run afoul of a threat to all of the Federation that lies in its own dark past. So did Lin and the film’s writers deliver a “good” Star Trek movie?

In my humble opinion…abso-tacular-lutely!! Sitting in the theater on Friday night, I was pretty sure this is the most fun I’ve had at a Star Trek movie in a long time. Does it have its weak points, of course and I’ll get to some of those but let me elaborate on some of what I liked about this film.

First, the camerawork. Justin Lin is an action director and as I mentioned before, a lot of the franchises fans—especially the more hardcore ones—were worried that an action director would work well for a “brainy” franchise like Star Trek and I can understand that. This film is very action-heavy and for some that could be a turn-off but Lin’s skill at action camerawork and creativity with his set pieces really works to the movie’s benefit. He really takes advantage of the environments and I was on the edge of my seat more than once with a stupid grin on my face. If you don’t want to see this movie because it’s not the traditional “brainy” Star Trek you’re used to, you’re really missing out on something fun.

The other thing that really carries this movie is the characters and dialogue. The way they interact with each other and with other individuals felt real to me, and what’s more it felt like how the Star Trek crew would talk. Now that can also work against it but I’ll save that for later. I especially liked the dynamic between Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) which we haven’t gotten to see a whole lot of in the more recent movies. The dialogue between them is both funny and genuine as Spock confides to McCoy that he is contemplating leaving Starfleet to help his people rebuild their society and that he is unsure of where he should belong. Karl Urban especially is a treat to watch as he plays Dr. McCoy in such a way that you know he’s McCoy but with his own personal touches thrown in.

Yet he’s not the only actor who gets a chance to shine. The entire cast is each given at least one moment in the spotlight and each of them makes the most of those opportunities. I especially enjoyed the alien newcomer, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) as a hardened survivor on the world where our motley crew of heroes find themselves stranded. And I would be remiss if I failed to mention the performance of Chekov by the late Anton Yelchin. It isn’t one of the greatest performances ever put to screen but Yelchin did the role proud and it is truly unfortunate we will never get to see him as Chekov. Indeed it is unfortunate that we may not see Chekov again for quite some time.

In addition to the action, the cast, and the dialogue, one of the things that I enjoyed most of all was the assortment of environments that the film saw fit to show off. Places that looked and felt—if you pardon the pun—alien. Truly strange in how they were designed and shot. I am a huge fan of the Star Wars films—perhaps more so than any other movie series—but I’ll be the first to admit that the planets they go to are, more or less, relegated to one specific type of climate be it the desert, the forest, the jungle, the ocean. Not that this is a problem on its own but there’s very little that’s visually interesting in these environments. Star Trek Beyond takes advantage of its alien setting to put our heroes in truly interesting and bizarre places that are fun just to look at.

Now this film does have some weaknesses. First off, the film’s MacGuffin. For those who may be unaware of what exactly a “MacGuffin” is, it’s a story device that every major character in the story is after and often can provide whoever possesses it with great power. In this case the MacGuffin is an ancient weapon of immense destructive power that the villain Krall (Idris Elba) is trying to acquire to use against StarFleet and the federation.

To be honest, I’m not against using MacGuffins in film. They are a sometimes necessary part of telling a good story. However, if you’re going to have a MacGuffin then you need to have it live up to the reputation that you choose to give it in the movie. This weapon is so powerful “that the ancients who built it, couldn’t control it. So they split it into two pieces and hid those pieces.” Needless to say that’s a pretty big promise. The people who created this thing were afraid of it and hid it. This could be like a StarFleet atom-bomb’s worth of destruction if our heroes don’t stop the villain. What is he going to do with it? How much is it going to cost our beloved crew to stop him?

I won’t go into spoilers here but the grand, judgement day weapon that has been built up as a tremendous threat to the safety of the entire galaxy ends up killing (counts on hand) about two people. Yeah, in the whole film. Kind of a letdown if you ask me. Anyhow, my point is this, a MacGuffin is a promise. A promise that us as audiences expect the film to keep. Think about this, would the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark have been nearly as awe-inspiring as it was if the Ark had opened and simply done nothing? After all we had heard about it? Of course not.

Now, you could go the Maltese Falcon route and have the MacGuffin be completely worthless in the end but I personally would have preferred that Beyond hadn’t tried to go both routes at once. It makes a powerful object seem much less powerful and takes away from the story.

Then there’s Krall a villain who seems kind of cool at first. He comes across as a legitimate threat and you’re interested to see what exactly his beef is with StarFleet. Then you start to learn his backstory and I’ll be honest, I thought it was pretty weak. Idris Elba plays him with all the gravitas you would expect after seeing any of his other roles and he does his best with the material he’s given but overall, I thought Krall was a case of a great concept mixed with poor execution.

Finally, there’s the finale. To get things out in the open, my biggest problem with the finale is that I think it’s a bit too long. Not to say that it’s a terrible final act, far from it. But the truly awesome moments that had me gleefully leaning toward the screen are mostly in the first part of the finale. It’s a rip-roaring set of moments as the crew takes on a swarm of enemy ships to the beat of rock n’ roll which is a nice call-back to the first reboot film. The enemy is defeated, yay. But then it just keeps going as our heroes take on the tedious task of catching and taking down the villain like they always do. And when they do stop him it just feels rather underwhelming.

Conclusion: So after that long winded your probably wondering how I would recommend this and my answer is that this is a hearty must-see film for theaters. If you’ve got the ability to go see it in theaters I would recommend it far above many of the other blockbusters that have been gracing theaters this summer. It is well worth the money to see it on the big-screen. Is it perfect? No. But as any of you who’ve read my previous reviews well know, I’m a firm advocate of the notion that there is no perfect movie. It has flaws but this movie entertained and intrigued me from start to finish and that is one of the highest compliments I can pay to a movie.

What did you think about this movie? Did you like it? No? What stood out to you? I’d love to hear more so let me know in the comments section and check out some of my other reviews and editorials at Flickmuncher.com. Until next time, have a great week and May the Flick be with You!!

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